 |
| May 16, 2004 |
I have been trying to figure out, how to adequately put words to a
miracle I still stand in awe of. I have been thinking about and
reading through the miracles of Jesus for a while, trying to
understand. How did the blind man explain to people the change in him,
how did the woman who had been bleeding for years get anyone to really
understand what she had been through, what Jesus had really healed her
from? I don’t know if there is a way to really get someone to
understand … here is my best attempt to be transparent with my life and
tell how Great and Good God really is!
In May
of 2004, Brian and I got married right out of college. In July of 2004,
he was diagnosed with stage 4, Hodgkins and Non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Before starting chemo our Oncologist made us aware that a likely side
effect of the drugs is sterility. He suggested if we ever wanted to have
kids, that we bank sperm.
“If we ever want
to have kids? Of course we want to have kids! All I have ever wanted to
be is a Mom! …. What if we never get to have kids?” all raced through
my thoughts! With one day before he had to start chemo treatments, we
entered the wonderfully uncomfortable world of fertility clinics and
banked sperm!
 |
| 1st of 6 rounds of Chemotherapy |
 |
| ICU after his Bone Marrow Transplant |
 | ||
| Recieving his Stem Cells back after High Dose Chemo. "Transplant!" |
With that taken care of (for
another worry on another day), Brian started his first of what would be
six rounds of chemotherapy, taken every 3 weeks, to get him into remission. Then at the
recommendation of a board of oncologists who looked at his case, in
January of 2005, he underwent a bone marrow transplant. Or first year
of marriage was consumed with questions to God: wondering why him, why
us, trying to make sense of something that in our reality, just didn’t!
It took almost a full year, to finally realize that God didn’t actually
owe us anything! Brian, and I for that matter, had ALREADY been saved!
He gave HIS Son up, so WE could have life! If he chose to save Bri from
the disease that was killing his body, then it was for His Glory alone!
If he chose to take Brian, then we would grieve with The Father who
loves him more than we could possibly understand. Looking back now,
where really we finally came, was to the place of surrender. Surrender
to God’s perfect will for our lives, and for those of us who understand
it: the odd place where we LOOSE our life … so we can GAIN it!
Brian did amazing with the treatment! God used some amazing doctors,
nurses and medical advances, to both save him and minister to our
hearts. We began the process of wrapping our hearts and minds around
what God had really done. Even knowing what He had done for Brian, in
the back of my mind was the nagging, sometimes paralyzing question:
“What if we can never have kids?”
 |
| Profile of Ayla (front) and Ashton (back) |
In January
of 2007, we started the very long, very painful, very uncomfortable,
VERY EXPENSIVE process of In Vitro Fertilization. The details of which
could be a whole different testimony, but to keep it short: by day 5,
we had only 2 healthy embryos that were still growing, which they
implanted … and we waited. I wish I could say it was in faith and trust
that God would take care of it. In reality, in the deepest part of my
heart I was terrified of the idea that it may not work. I was almost
paralyzed in fear at the idea that I may never get to be a Mom! At our
first ultrasound, we got to hear 2 perfect, strong little heartbeats!
Again, I am almost embarrassed to admit, that faith was not where I was
dwelling. Instead I set up a little camp right in-between fear and
worry, making myself miserable and sick, over the “responsibility” I
felt I had, to “make sure” they were OK. (As if that really had anything
to do with me.)
 |
| 1st Day of Preschool. I should have taken this from the back! |
Then one night, in one of the
most significant miracles I had yet to experience, God gave me, a
perfectly timed gift! One I neither had earned nor deserved. I had a
dream of a little blond boy and girl, wearing backpacks, holding hands,
walking up a hill to their first day of school. It was from behind, and
at the time I had no idea, but at 12 weeks pregnant, before we even
knew if we were having a boy or a girl, I dreamt in perfect detail about
Ashton and Ayla. For the first time, in 3 years I started to allow God
in, to break my hard heart of control and get to really EXPERIENCE what I
had “known” Him to be, my whole life.
 |
| Ayla Joy |
 |
| Ashton Tru |
On
August 2, 2007, at only 29 weeks, Ashton and Ayla made their early debut
into the world at a whopping 2 lbs, 12 oz. and 3 lbs. 4 oz! Gripped by
crushing guilt over them being so premature and drowning in sheer
desperation, I clung to the God who saves, with everything I had. I
knew then, the same thing I knew when Brian was sick: God didn’t owe us
anything! They were His and His alone! If he had wanted them, he could
have taken them home. And yet, in the midst of one of the scariest
times of our life, God again showed us who He really is: He is a God of
hope, of healing and of mercy! More than that, He is a Father who loved
us and showed us HIS love for OUR kids, when we were desperate for a
miracle! They just turned 4 years old this month, with not a single
complication from being 11 weeks premature! Every time I look at them, I
am in awe of how amazing God really is! (Well, almost every time …
Let’s just be honest, 4 year olds can be really trying sometimes!)
 |
| Ayla at 1 week old |
After all of that, we still are not to the miracle that has me standing in total awe of how amazing God really is …
I don’t know exactly when I started wanting another baby. Long before
I said it out-loud to anyone, my heart started longing for a child I
feel like was missing from our family. This is such a hard thing to
describe to anyone who has not experienced it, but I would look at
pictures of the 4 of us, and have this deep, nagging feeling that
someone was missing. With the first IVF cycle we had spend every bit of
money we could and worked really hard trying to pay it all off. In
February of 2011, we went in to talk to the fertility Dr. about other
options. Turns out, there are NO OTHER OPTIONS. We could spend $20,000
out of pocket (well really out of thin air – because let’s face it,
between raising twins and real life, we don’t have that much in any
pocket, ever!) to “try” IVF again, or we could look into adoption.
We started looking into adopting an infant; and tried to wrap our heads
around the fact that it is even more expensive than IVF. I also
realized quickly when we looked deeper into adoption, that I had to
first find a way to grieve the loss of not having another child of our
own, before we could try to move forward. To be honest, I had NO idea
how to even begin to do that. How do you grieve something you don’t
have, that you will never have? My heart and my mind were sad beyond
belief. With every announcement by someone we know who was pregnant or
every well-meaning person who reminded us: “You should just be thankful
for the kids you do have!”, my despair and grief grew.
I spent way more time that I would like to admit, racking my brain to
come up with some solution, some way to MAKE the miraculous happen. All
the while we were telling people: “If we want another child, our only
options are to try IVF again, or adopt.” And then we would add: “Or God
could just do a miracle and heal Brian.” The last part said in much the
same way you would say: “Or God could just let us win the lottery!”
And it’s because of THAT attitude right there, more than anything else, I
am blown away by the mercy and the grace of what God has done!
Not long after we started looking into IVF and adoption, trying to
figure out which way to go, where God was leading us, I had another
dream. I was in a delivery room standing next to a woman helping coach
her as she pushed. Right before the baby was born I realized I was
actually the one in labor and pushing, and they laid this perfect baby
up on my chest. The next scene I remember from the dream, Brian and I
were standing in the hall of the hospital. I was holding a baby boy,
wrapped in a blue blanket and I kept saying, “I can’t believe he is
ours.” I woke up and remember thinking it was really un-clear if the
baby was ours biologically, or if we had adopted him.
What was really clear though, was that just like the dream of Ashton
and Ayla: God had given me a promise. If we wanted to adopt, He would
bless that! If we wanted to have a baby of our own, He would bless that
as well. This sounds dumb saying, but the problem was: even with a
promise from God, neither Brian nor I still had any idea how we could
afford either one.
After being in Castle Rock
for not quite a year, we decided it was probably time to pick a church
somewhere near our home. In 2011 started attending a church we have come
to really enjoy. As we attended, we started hearing the talk of
healing services and how much this church stands on the belief that God
both IS a healer and WANTS to heal. The idea of it was not a foreign
concept to us, since we had grown up in the church, hearing the miracles
of Jesus and knowing He “can” heal. Not only did we know it, we had
experienced it, when He healed Brian from cancer, and then healed our
babies perfectly in the NICU! You would think we would have learned
something by now!?
The problem was we had
spent a long time in a church that was on fire for Jesus and bringing
people into relationship with Him, but spent very little time talking
about the supernatural part of who God is. Going to a healing service
just felt weird to me! With kind of an attitude, I think I even said to
Brian one day, “Why do we have to go to a healing service to pray? If
God hears our every prayer, every thought; if He wants to heal, and we
are seeking Him, asking for healing, why can’t he answer our prayers
from here? Why only if we go there?” To which my wise and much more
levelheaded husband answered: “Maybe so other people can see and
experience His Glory too.”
I figured that was
probably right, and even though I fully believed God COULD heal, I was
still not ready to open up my heart and believe that he WOULD heal
Brian. The problem that I had was this: if I let myself believe with
everything I am, that God WILL heal Brian and we can have a baby on our
own without IVF or Dr.s or drugs or adoption, and He chooses not to,
then I will be devastated! The paralyzing fear I felt way back before I
had the twins, I hadn’t let go, I just buried it. As clearly as I have
maybe ever “heard” something from God, I felt Him say, “Can you trust
me enough to take care of you, if you are devastated?” While I was
working on my little plan to not fall completely apart, if we never got
to hold the child I so strongly felt is supposed to be in our family,
God was trying to teach me that He alone is actually Big enough to
handle the hard parts of life! We serve a God who is compassionate and
comforting, who will grieve with us in our sorrow and lift us up, if
only I would be willing to let Him in to do it.
It was the Saturday before this perfectly timed sermon on Hope vs.
Wishing, I finally admitted to myself and then out-loud to Brian. “For
years I think I have been praying that God would heal you, so we can
have a baby, but really I have only been “wishing” God would do it.” I
know the dream was a promise that God gave me and yet I was living like
it was nothing. For the first time since we got married and started
this long, crazy road, I was ready to be like the woman who touched the
hem of Jesus’s robe. In my desperate need, in my deepest desire, I
finally let what I have always “known” about God seep into my heart, and
started praying in Hope for God to heal Brian and allow us to have a
baby on our own. We decided we would go to the next healing service at
Jubilee, (even if it still felt weird) and talked about how after we got
home from our vacation at the end of July we would start “trying” to
have a baby, the way everyone else “tries”.
We got
back from vacation on Saturday, July 30th. I told Brian I thought I should take a
pregnancy test. To which he responded: “we are not spending money on that,
you’re not pregnant.” To be fair,
his response was warranted, as quite often I tend to overreact to ANY slight
symptom that may even vaguely be related to pregnancy and insist I need to take
a test. After 6 years of him being
medically sterile and me insisting on buying ridiculously expensive tests (for
something that you pee on), he shook his head, put his foot down and moved on. I however, was still feeling like our
whole house was on rockers and decided to text my neighbor to see if she had
any extra tests (as I knew she was pregnant herself, not because I assume
people just keep them on hand).
2 Min. later I was sitting on the bathroom floor, looking at 2 strong
blue lines and waffling back and froth between elation and utter
confusion. I came out to tell
Brian and with a very suspicious look, he insisted the test must be wrong. I then texted my neighbor and we had
another little pow-wow over the back fence, this time to compare our positive
pee sticks, at which point she said, “Did you ever think when we moved in here
we would be comparing pee sticks over the fence.” Nope, can’t say I ever
thought this would happen! But,
for the record, mine looked just like hers, so clearly jumping up and down and
screaming with our pee sticks was the right thing to do!
Brian at this point was still insistent
that there was something wrong with the test and then insisted that I go buy a
“good one” from the store (which I find ironic, given the proceeding part of
the story.) 5 positive pregnancy
tests later, we did what any normal people would do, I lined them up and took a
picture, then started an internet search on what exactly can cause a false
positive on a pregnancy test. That
proved not to be the greatest idea we have ever had, as the answer involves
things like tumors and cancer. Since we have already been there and done that
in our short marriage, we weren’t so excited to start down that road again and
decided to wait until we talked to a Doctor before we officially freaked
out. We are just weeks from welcoming a new life into our family and we are still standing in total disbelief of the biggest
miracle I think I have ever experienced (which I feel like is saying a
lot, given the story of our life.)
More than
anything though I am humbled and broken and so unbelievably grateful
that God works and moves, despite my feeble attempts at faith. God both
can and DOES heal, and not just when we have perfect steadfast faith!
He has mercy on those who struggle, He gives hope to those who stumble
and fall, over and over again! He renews His promises to us even in our
desperation, and I am so thankful!
To top it
all off, we went to church to hear the pastor talk about the year of
Jubilee. In Biblical times, the year of Jubilee was every 7 years, a
time to rest and celebrate and reap the harvest God had given. It
didn’t really sink in until we were worshiping at the end and I turned
to Brian and said: “It can’t really be a coincidence that this was our
7th year wedding anniversary!” Then after going to the Dr. and trying
to figure out how far along we are, we realized that (although we can’t
know for sure) this baby was conceived exactly 7 years to the month and
possibly to the very day, from the day Brian was diagnosed in 2004!
 |
| Coming soon: Micah Rain Cowdrey |
So, maybe you already love the Lord, maybe you are on the fence, or
maybe you want nothing to do with a God that may seem big and scary and
mean. I can’t reconcile for anyone the really hard, really legitimate,
questions about God.
All I can say is this:
Where there was only sadness and
grief and loss before, now there is life!
I have literally NO
explanation for that, other than we love and serve a God who is Big and
who is really Good! Soon we will welcome our new baby BOY into our family …
for His Glory alone!
